Rise of Kingdoms: Lost Crusade is Lilith Games' alliance war game, out since 2018 as Rise of Civilizations and renamed a year later. It runs on Android, iOS, a native Windows client of about 5 GB, and the Mac App Store on Apple silicon. One account follows you across all of them.
It is not dying. Lilith announced 100 million players in December 2023, and industry estimates put lifetime revenue past three billion dollars by mid-2024. Fifteen civilizations are live at the time of writing. What the game asks of you is a calendar, not a wallet: VIP grows with logins, commanders grow with sculptures, and your kingdom's first Kingdom versus Kingdom war lands around day 85 whether you are ready or not. Being free puts it beside the other free PC games, with a longer horizon than most.
The March talent rework made most older guides wrong
Every talent build published before March is suspect. Lilith rebuilt the talent trees on March 4 and, in the same patch, cut the KvK skills that had turned open-field fights into one-sided smites.
What changed, in three lines
- Poseidon's Violent Waves no longer slows up to five enemies by half at once. It stacks on one target now.
- Apollo's stronghold damage fell from a 50% durability cut to 30%.
- Patron switches went from one to two per season.
I re-specced Zhuge Liang the week the patch landed, from a build I had copied in 2025. Three points sat in nodes that no longer existed, refunded without a word. Check every tree you built before March.
A second pass is expected and has no date. What the talent rework changed, commander by commander tracks the patch and what is still pending.
VIP is the paywall, and the calendar is the slow way through it
VIP is the one system in Rise of Kingdoms: Lost Crusade that money buys faster than time. It sells nothing you cannot earn. It sells it years sooner.
How the points arrive
- The daily chest starts at 40 points and grows by 20 a day to a cap of 200. Miss a day and it drops back to 40.
- Gems convert to VIP points in the VIP shop, and events hand out gems.
- Purchases add points on top of whatever they contain.
My free account crossed VIP 6 in its second month, on the chest plus gems I had not spent elsewhere. VIP 10 is the level that changes your commanders, because it opens a daily legendary sculpture. On the chest alone, it sits about two years out.
The VIP table on this page is the honest version. If those years are the dealbreaker, games like Rise of Kingdoms for PC without VIP tiers finds the closest match, and Era of Conquest wins it. For the model itself, how free PC games make money sets VIP beside the alternatives.
Two commanders carry your first hundred days
Commanders are your army, and two well-built ones beat six half-built ones. Your civilization hands you a starter. Sculptures from events, chests and VIP raise the rest.
What you are actually choosing
- Epics are cheap to max and carry you through the first season.
- Legendaries need 5-5-5-5 expertise before their fourth skill is worth anything.
- Talent points decide whether a commander gathers, fights in the field or holds a garrison.
Spreading sculptures across whoever looked strongest that week was my first account's mistake. I had four legendaries at two skills each, and none of them could fight. The fix is an order, not a tier list.
Lilith has run a Commander Swap event that moves expertise from an outdated commander to a newer one. It is a safety net, not a plan, and it has no fixed schedule.
Which commanders to raise first, talents included gives the order: Liu Che first, Zhuge Liang second, with the talent points for each.
Play Rise of Kingdoms: Lost Crusade free tonight on PC
The daily VIP chest and your kingdom's KvK clock both start the day you first log in. Every day you wait is a day of points and a day closer to the war.
Play Rise of Kingdoms free →KvK starts around day 85 and decides whether you stay
Kingdom versus Kingdom is the game the first eighty days were building toward. Eight kingdoms move to a shared map, the Lost Kingdom, and fight over passes, strongholds and the centre.
The clock you are on
- Pre-KvK opens when your kingdom is 75 to 95 days old.
- Eve of the Crusade runs one week before the map opens.
- The season then lasts about 50 days, so budget two months.
- Rewards include a commander you cannot get elsewhere: Charlemagne in the first season, Wu Zetian in the second.
What you need to matter is an alliance that talks, and marches you can afford to lose. My first KvK, I spent the season feeding rallies and rebuilding troops. It was the most useful thing my city did. A farmer who shows up counts for more than a fighter who does not.
The March rework was aimed here. Poseidon and Apollo were cut because they decided these fights, which is why season guides written before it read wrong now.
It runs on Windows without an emulator, and on Apple silicon
Rise of Kingdoms: Lost Crusade has a native Windows client, released on April 6, 2022. You no longer need BlueStacks or LDPlayer to play it at a desk.
What it asks of the machine
- Windows 7 or later, 4 GB of RAM, about 5 GB of disk.
- macOS through the Mac App Store, on M1 chips and later.
- One Lilith account carries your city between phone and PC.
The game is a map and a menu, not a shooter. I run it on a laptop with integrated graphics beside my work window. The only thing that stutters is the map at full zoom during a rally, with a few hundred marches drawn at once.
Emulators still have a place if you want several accounts open side by side. That is a choice, not a requirement.
Rise of Kingdoms on PC, client by client covers the Windows client, the Mac path and what the 5 GB actually holds.
Cumulative VIP points. The daily chest ramps from 40 to 200 points a day; gems and purchases add on top, so real free progress runs faster than the last column.
| VIP level | Points needed | What it unlocks | Daily chest alone |
|---|---|---|---|
| VIP 6 | 11,500 | Permanent second build queue | About 2 months |
| VIP 10 | 150,000 | One legendary sculpture a day | About 2 years |
| VIP 12 | 350,000 | Two sculptures a day, combat bonuses | Nearly 5 years |
| VIP 14 | 750,000 | Three sculptures a day | About 10 years |